The Green caldron - University Library

12 The Green Caldron
THE
City Within a City
Sandra Willard
Rhetoric 101, Theme 1
DAY IS HOT, THE SUN BRIGHT, BUT SOMEHOW THE
sun's rays barely filter through to the deteriorated streets—streets
shadowed by the crumbling, leaning buildings and the heavy structures
of the elevated tracks. This is a strange, humid, dark city within a city.
It has its own character familiar to its own inhabitants, hostile to out-
siders and it has its own noises : the sound of pushcart vendors hawking their
wares, the whine of the knife sharpener's stone, the sound of horsedrawn carts
on the pavement, the mournful note of voices singing from some distant, dingy
hallway. The streets smell of rank decay, the decay of litter strewn on the curbs
and the sidewalks, the smell of condemned but still inhabited buildings, and
of the people who abide there.
The city is not without its people. They have their own way of life,
as strange and depressing as the streets which they have made their own.
A woman strolls aimlessly along, upthrust chin, defiant eyes in a mask-like
over-powdered face. Two small boys in tattered tee shirts and bare feet
race past, knocking into an old stooped man who mutters incoherently as
he staggers down the street. A young girl stands by a music grinder's
machine watching her withered arm with morbid fascination as it turns the
crank.
They have conditioned themselves to be indifferent to the problems of
people in their own society. They are suspicious and resentful of intruders.
A baby sits in an empty display window of a store playing with a long,
cruel-looking knife. A large, dark woman stands, hands on hips, in a doorway
across the street, scrutinizing three white girls. She turns abruptly, enters
the dim hallway, and slams the door of the dilapidated apartment.
This city with its smells, its sounds, and its people is surrounded, crowded,
and literally crushed by the buildings that are or should be condemned.
Some are partially destroyed, either by man or by age. They lean against
one another for support; they sag in every direction. Bits of ragged cloth
flutter out of windows that have lost their panes of glass. People are still
living in these tenements, crowded between makeshift cardboard and plywood
partitions and unsteady, creaking floors.
Everywhere there is idleness and depression. Men in dirty underwear
and wrinkled slacks sit on fire escapes, staring ahead but seeing nothing.
They sit in their rooms, in restaurants and taverns, and on sidewalks. The day
grows hotter. Steam rises from the open sewers. The air is thick with smoke
from the factories and the stench from the streets. The people sit and wait
wait for darkness to cool and blot out the streets they have made their own
and can't leave.
—